2 authors named book-award winners

The Mountain West Center for Regional Studies, Utah State University, has announced the recipients of the annual David Woolley Evans and Beatrice Cannon Evans Biography and Handcart Awards in book writing. The prize is $10,000 for the Evans Award and $1,000 for the Handcart Award, presented last month.

• THE EVANS AWARD goes to Virginia Kerns, anthropology professor, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Va., for "Scenes From the High Desert: Julian Steward's Life and Theory," in which she explores Steward's early life in the American West and his anthropological contributions to Western landscape.

The award, established in 1983, recognizes outstanding research and writing of a biography of a person who lived a significant portion of his or her life in the American West and was influenced by Mormon institutions and social practices. It was endowed by the Evans family. David was founder of David W. Evans and Associates, one of the largest advertising and public relations firms in the western United States, and Beatrice was a historian and editor of "Cannon Family Historical Treasury," a six-generation history of her father's family.

• THE HANDCART AWARD goes to Ripley Hugo, a poet and English professor at the University of Montana, for "Writing for Her Life: The Novelist Mildred Walker." Walker is the author of 13 novels centered on Montana.

The award, established in 1996, is given annually to the author of a biography of merit, often by an emerging author, that contributes to the understanding of the Mormon-settled West.